Can video game play help transform millennial couch potatoes into active young adults? According to a recent study, researchers were able to get young players cavorting within a mystical, fantasy role-playing scenario—with no magic otherwise involved…

An international team of researchers has identified 74 areas of the human genome associated with educational attainment. It is well known that social and other environmental factors influence education, but these findings, reported by the Social Scie…

How does a mere text messaging application sent to unemployed, isolated, non-adhering HIV substance users get them to comply with healthcare visits and drug prescriptions?

Cognitive function is driven by dynamic interactions between large-scale neural circuits or networks, enabling behavior. Fundamental principles constraining these dynamic network processes have remained elusive. I will discuss a recent application of…

This talk presents two research projects that demonstrate that cultural context shapes schizophrenia. The first is an ethnographic study of the lives of homeless psychotic women on the streets of Chicago. Why do so many women refuse offers of help? I…

Many health-related concerns due the interplay of community members’ social media and geographical uses exist. However, rapid deployment of massive amounts of social media data and big data analytic tools for sensing can also become a health interven…

Psychiatrists may soon be able to diagnose mental disorders, including psychosis and mania, by analyzing patients’ speech patterns. The same technique also promises to someday allow clinicians to spot neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s diseas…

Patient non-adherence to prescribed medicines is endemic and thus a central issue in the quality and economics of ambulatory medical care and drug trials. To be efficacious, a course of drug treatment must have a timely initiation, and treatment pers…

In their recent article for the special issue of the American Psychological Association’s Society for Health Psychology journal, Health Psychology: eHealth/mHealth, funded by the NIH Office of Behavior and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), Thomas and…

With the increasing availability and use of mobile technology such as wearable computing sensors (e.g., activity monitors), a wealth of wearable “smart tool interactions” are now, quite literally, at the consumer’s fingertips. The health care industr…